"I understand," he said. "They are friends of yours--eh?"
"Yes," I replied. "And I wish to have interviews with the ladies with
as little delay as possible."
"Ladies--eh?" he asked, raising his grey eyebrows. "Who are they?"
"Their name is de Rosen," I said, "but their exile numbers are 14956 and
14957."
He bent to his writing-table, near which he was at that moment standing,
and scribbled down the numbers. "They arrived recently, you say?"
"Yes. And I may tell you in confidence that a grave injustice has been
done in exiling them. His Majesty is about to institute full and
searching inquiries into the circumstances."
His bloated face fell. He grew a trifle paler, and regarded me with
some concern.
"I suppose they arrived with the last convoy?" he said reflectively.
"We will quickly see."
And he rang a bell, in answer to which a smart young Cossack officer
appeared, saluting.
To him he handed the slip of paper with the numbers, saying in that
hard, imperious voice of his:
"Report at once to me the whereabouts of these two prisoners. They
arrived recently, and I am awaiting information."
The officer again saluted and withdrew. Scarcely had he closed the door
when another officer, wearing his heavy greatcoat flecked with snow,
entered and, saluting, handed the Governor a paper, saying:
"The prisoners for Kolimsk are ready to start, Excellency."
"How many?"
"Two hundred and seven--one hundred and twenty-six men, and eighty-one
women. Your Excellency."
Sredne Kolimsk! That was the most northerly and most dreaded settlement
in all the Arctic, still distant nearly one thousand miles--the living
tomb of so many of Markoff's victims.
"Are they outside?" asked the Governor. To which the officer in charge
replied in the affirmative.
"May I see them?" I asked. Whereupon my request was readily granted.
But before we went outside General Vorontzoff took the list from the
Captain's hand and scrawled his signature--the signature which sent two
hundred and seven men and women to the coldest region in the world--that
frozen bourne whence none ever returned.
Outside in the dark snowy night the wretched gang, in rough, grey,
snow-covered clothes, were assembled, a dismal gathering of the most
hopeless and dejected wretches in the world, all of them educated, and
the majority being members of the professional classes. Yet all had, by
that single stroke of the Governor's pen, been consigned to a terrible
fate, existence in the filthy yaurtas or huts of the half-civilised
Yakuts--an unwashed race who live in the same stable as their cows, and
whose habits are incredibly disgusting.
That huddled, shivering crowd had already trudged over four thousand
miles on foot and survived, though how many had died on the way would
never be told. They stood there like driven cattle, inert, silent and
broken. Hardly a word was spoken, save by the mounted Cossack guards,
who smoked or joked, several of them having been drinking vodka freely
before leaving.
The Governor, standing at my side, glanced around them, mere shadows on
the snow. Then he exclaimed with a low laugh, as though amused:
"Even this fate is too good for such vermin! Let's go inside."
I followed him in without a word. My heart bled for those poor
unfortunate creatures, who at that moment, at a loud word of command
from the Cossack captain, moved away into the bleak and stormy night.
In the cosy warmth of his own room General Vorontzoff threw himself into
a deep armchair and declared that I must leave the "Guestnitsa" and
become his guest, an invitation which I had no inclination to accept.
He offered me champagne, which I was compelled out of courtesy to drink,
and we sat smoking until presently the young Cossack officer reappeared,
bearing a bundle of official papers.
"Well, where are they?" inquired the Governor quickly. "How slow you
are!" he added emphatically.
"The two prisoners in question are still here in Yakutsk," was the
officer's reply. "They have not yet been sent on to Parotovsk."
"Then I must go to them at once," I cried in eagerness, starting up
quickly from my chair. "I must speak with them without delay. I demand
to do so--in the Tzar's name."
The officer bent and whispered some low words into His Excellency's ear;
whereupon the Governor, turning to me with a strange expression upon his
coarse countenance, said in a quiet voice:
"I much regret, Mr Trewinnard, but I fear that is impossible--quite
impossible!"